VENICE AND THE VENETO
OCTOBER 8 - 15, 2026

For first timers as well as those who return many times, Venice is certainly a "magical" city:  built on weeds and swamps, the only city state which was a republic during the Renaissance, the Western terminus of the silk route from China, la Serenissima harbored many riches and was the first Italian city  whose artists utilized oil rather than egg tempera as a binding medium for pigment. Riches also came from the mainland which the aristocracy farmed, yet few tourists visit this area called the Veneto.  On this trip we shall stay in a hotel in Venice and see some sights not so familiar to the first time tourist: the Pinault collection in the Palazzo Grassi and the Doganna, the Fortuny home and museum, the Academia museum, the Peggy Guggenheim museum and the Scuola di San Rocco with the cycle of Tintoretto paintings especially commissioned for it.  But the mainland holds further art historical wonders: in Padua at the Scrovegni Chapel the wall frescoes by Giotto commemorating the lives of the Virgin and the Christ; in Vicenza the 16th century public and private buildings designed by Palladio which together with his pattern books would alter Western architecture in the 17th and 18th centuries.  One day will be spent in Ravenna where in churches, tombs and baptisteries are the most amazing mosaics dedicated to the secular (Byzantine empire) and the religious. And of course there will be free time to explore and shop or wander on your own or with your friends.
 

Dates: October 8-15, 2026 (lectures occur October 9-14)
Cost: $14,000
Hotel: Hotel Nolinski Venezia
Deposit $4000 due April 1

Cost includes:

• 7 nights in deluxe room with breakfast and taxes at the new Nolinski Venezia, a few bridges West of San Marco near la Fenice

• Sightseeing entrance fees and water taxi transportation to Mercedes V vans for travel on the mainland

• Lectures by Cynthia Nachmani

• Accompanied by guide